My First Offer!

I got my first offer from university today! It caught me completely off guard, I usually check my email every day whenever I get the chance to see if there has been any changes to my application (this typically means that you’ve got an offer) but today it didn’t even cross my mind. It’s a massive relieve never the less, I was a complete nervous wreck every time I got an email and now I can relax knowing that all I have to do is finish this year with the grades I need and I’m off to uni!

I already went over this in my last blog but I seriously didn’t think this was something I was going to do, but that’s what has made it so exciting for me. Just because I want to go to uni I have found myself getting involved in things that I would typically avoid like volunteering and taking active interests in topics that I would have otherwise overlooked. So far the journey towards university has been a very eye opening experience and some would say it’s a way of avoiding ‘the real world’ but I strongly disagree. To me it’s a more educational method of learning to manage money and plan for the future.

I may be going off on a bit of a tangent but I’m just full of inspiration and excitement now. This is just the motivation I needed to keep pushing through mountains of coursework and revision :)

This is a bit of a short post today, I think that’s what I’ll keep doing because you guys seem to like these the most, see you in the next one!

Leave a comment or tweet at me if you have any questions!

Follow me on Twitter! - @Jayson__Knott (double underscore)

Applying To University (Already!)

Well guys, here we are. After a long summer of no posts (sorry guys) it’s come to that time where I have to start picking uni courses and the unis themselves. I’m not going to lie it’s a massive change for me, when I first left school uni was the last thing on my mind! But not look at me, applying for law in some of the best universities going! Without turning this into a sob story, I used to think I wasn’t good enough to go to uni. It just goes to show that our only limit is ourselves (sorry for the borderline cringy quote)

Well after a couple of weeks researching what university would be the best for me I managed to sift through about 10 to get to 5. This is the hardest part of the application if you ask me. I’ve managed to choose Manchester, Salford, BPP, Manchester Met and The University of Law. All based in Manchester, which for me is ideal because it means I can spend most of my time at uni and still come back home to see family and friends whenever I want to. I did originally plan on going to somewhere like London or Durham, but that was a step too far for me.

Skipping the boring stuff, it came to my personal statement. Wow, just wow. I never knew that having 4,000 characters could be so stressful! It seriously does limit what you have to say about yourself, because you’ve been essentially asked to market yourself to 5 universities in 4,000 characters. To put that into perspective that’s just under a page of writing. But the upside is that you have to be concise and put some real structure in there that means that you get everything you want in whilst reaching that character limit.

Having someone look at your personal statement is key. I personally think it’s a good idea to have someone who knows a lot about applications in relation to university and job applications. I had our careers adviser look through my whole application and personal statement, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Once she gave me the nod I had my personal tutor look at my personal statement. This is especially helpful because your personal tutor is typically the one who writes your reference, so this means that they can get a look at your personal statement and take some pointers for your reference. This would make you have a well-rounded application.

So this was my experience so far with my application, with a few little pointers in there. Obviously I won’t know if this works until I get offers but until then fingers crossed!

Jayson :)

Twitter - @Jayson__Knott

What's Next?

So now all the exams are over and most of us BTEC students are making the final push for the deadline, it’s important to think about what is next? Some of you (like me) instantly think “Summer! I’m gonna chill and just party all summer!” Although that’s nice and I encourage that, I think we should think about the V word. Volunteering.

Volunteering is a big part of what makes you stand out at uni and soon we will all be writing our personal statements, and naturally we will be making ‘statements’. Something along the lines of “I’m a very energetic and proactive student” but you’ll have to proof that you are. Volunteering is the best way to do that. I’m not saying spend your ENTIRE summer volunteering, enjoy yourself. Just because you aren’t in college it doesn’t mean you should stop developing yourself.

So what are my plans? Some of you may have noticed I have been going on about NCS for a long time now, granted maybe a little too much, but I have applied and successfully become a NCS Volunteer. I’m due to start on the 27^th of July and I can’t wait. After that I’m going to have a little look around and see if any volunteer positions catch my eye. Buuuuttt I won’t lie I am going to have a lot of fun during the summer, I’m hopefully going to Leeds Festival so that should make an interesting blog for you guys ;).

Short and sweat, have a good summer, use your time wisely. But most of all, enjoy yourself no matter what you do :)

Follow me on Twitter! - @Jayson__Knott

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5 Things I Wish I Knew At The Start Of Year 12

Now that year 12 is drawing to a close I’ve found myself looking back and wishing that I knew things that I knew now that I didn’t back then.

1.    The first year of college isn’t a mess around – At first I and a lot of my friends thought that you could work moderately hard and just get through the first year on a backseat, but we were totally wrong. Luckily my main subject is a BTEC so aiming for the top grade is standard really but with my maths I did that and ended up failing my first resit. That was a wake up call and a very frustrating one too.

2.   Tutors are there to help -  For the first few months I was one of those students that if I got stuck I wouldn’t ask for help, I’d keep going at it and get it wrong all the time. It gets you more and more frustrated and it will annoy your tutors. Just ask them for help, it’s not weakness and it doesn’t make you stupid it shows that you are keen to learn.

3. Applying yourself is good – It took me quite a while to take opportunities that college put in my path. It took two presentations for me to sign up to NCS and looking back I should have done it the first time around. Now that I take whatever will benefit me, I’m on the student executive (student association, it got a ‘re-brand’ today) and student ambassadors. Both have a lot of involvement with schools and events run in the college.

4.  Free periods aren’t for relaxing – I realised that the free periods on your timetable aren’t there for you to meet friends and talk for an hour. They are there for you to catch up on work and keep productive in your day. Use them wisely.

5.   You don’t have as much time as you think – Deadlines are set for a reason, not for you to just do the work, it’s the maximum time needed for you to do the work that is set. You can’t just relax for a week and just rush to get it done the next week. Treat your deadlines like the finishing time of an exam, that extra time you have is to make sure you got everything right and to check if you missed anything.

Those are the 5 things I wish I’d known at the start of year 12.

It’s crazy to think that in 3 weeks time I would have finished my first year of college. It really has flown by and I do have a few regrets of not using my time better than I could have. But aside from all that it has been amazing and I’ve met so many amazing people and I started writing this blog. I hope I continue to write in my second year. See you in the next one :)

Follow me on twitter! - @jayson__knott

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Exams and Other Things

First off I’d like to apologise for the embarrassing lack of posts, it’s been a very busy month for me.

My biggest excuse the addition to the family! My little sister Ruby was born around 3 weeks ago and let me tell you, she has a really good set of lungs! She could scream the house down if she wanted to! Here she is :) So far I’ve managed to keep away from nappy changing, buuutt I have a feeling I won’t be able to avoid that much longer.

Anyway enough about my family/social life. Why have I been busy you might ask? You don’t have any exams Jayson? Well I did have my maths resit… Smashed it… Obviously… But seriously I was revising every single day for maths so if I fail again I don’t deserve to walk this earth.

It’s not just my maths exam either, nope. The course work is piling up! I mean right now I should be doing a massive line of merits and distinctions, but no I’m here writing this blog *hangs head in shame*. It’s only because I’ve been getting a few emails off of you guys (never going to get used to that by the way) and I kinda miss writing casually like this.

I was thinking, maybe if you guys want me to talk about something, maybe an issue that you have with college that you think I and everyone else could relate to, I could write it for you? I mean I want to make this a little more down deep and personal. So just drop me some suggestions in the comments here, tweet me or just go with what most of you are doing, just email me :)

Twitter - @Jayson__Knott

Here Comes The Exam Season

First off, sorry for the lack of posts lately. Like most of you guys I’ve been snowed in with revision and coursework. This is only going to be a short one for now, but I’ve got a big one coming for those who love to read.

Anyway, the exam season is just around the corner and many of us (myself included) start to feel the very real pressure of possibly failing, whether it be psychology to law, or English to maths, almost everyone is stressing. For me it’s all about maths, I personally can’t be dealing with another fail in maths. But even though I’m well on track for passing, or maybe even getting a B in maths I’m still feeling a very real threat of failure. I think it’s time that we all stop stressing about these things and just focus on doing well, not thinking about the grades themselves, but just focusing on doing the best we can, because then if you fail, you know that you’ve done your best and you can’t beat yourself up over it. So come on guys, stop stressing and just get on with it!

Want to get in touch?

Follow me on Twitter - @Jayson__Knott (double underscore)

Or just leave a comment :)

Student Association, Student Ambassador and Associate Mentor!

So today I thought I’d do something different, I thought I’d tell you guys about what I’m trying to get involved in and maybe it might make you guys think about going to do the same things, if you have these kind of ‘schemes’ set up in your college.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve applied for the student association and student ambassador positions in my college. Being a student ambassador is almost like being a prefect, well it seems like it to me and it is supposed to be a good experience. It’s also something I can put down on my UCAS application, but that’s not the only thing that is motivating me to go for it. I’ve always been that kid that wanted to help out in my school, however in this case its college.

The student association though, that’s what I’m really gunning for, this is something that is extremely beneficial to me and other people in my college. I would essentially become part of how the college is run, I and everyone else in the association would take issues, or ideas, to whoever we think would help and basically tell them what we think needs to change or improve. The student association also organises most of the events in college, for example some of the events in my college are pink day, little events or shops for red nose day, all that kind of stuff. You are essentially the go to students if something needs doing I guess. I don’t know much about the role just yet. But there’s a catch, you have to be elected. I’ve got to say, there is some competition but I think I’ll pull through.

I’m also trying to become an associate mentor for NCS this summer, I got an email about this around two weeks ago and instantly applied. From what I can gather from the information I’ve been given, this position is where you essentially help out the mentors in NCS. That’s all I know so far. I do want to do it non the less, because I really wish that I could do NCS again and this would be the closest I could get to that and it also gives me more experience, gives me the chance of possibly working for NCS and yet another thing to put on my CV and UCAS application.

Well these are the three things I’ve been trying to get involved in and I would be happy if I got just one of these positions. It’s something that’s different and worth doing so I thought why not at least try, because usually I don’t bother with these things because I never think I would get it. But I made it through shortlisting so you never know :)

Follow me on twitter! @Jayson__Knott

Comment if you have any questions or reach out on twitter :)

I'm Back!

Hey there guys! I’m back! Sorry for not posting over Easter, I’ve been having trouble with my laptop so I couldn’t post.

So what am I going to talk about today? To be honest I don’t have topic, I just want to get you guys up to speed on what’s going on. But I do want to talk about that feeling you get on the first day back from a decently long half term. You all know what I’m talking about, that horrible Sunday night where you tell yourself that you should get an early night, but you never do. If you are like me the first day back is the worst day back, because I personally can’t get to sleep. I stayed up until around 4am last night, and I’m feeling the regret from that now. I mean right now, I just want to back to bed and just watch Netflix all day.

You’ll never guess what happened to me on Saturday though. Well basically I had a very messed up charger for my laptop so I decided to buy a new one. Bear in mind my laptop is 10 years old so I can’t find an official site for this charger. So I found a charger on some site and I decided to buy it. So after around 4 hours of continuous revision and coursework I lay down next to my laptop and I hear this electrical spark like noise, then my laptop essentially blue up and burned my right shoulder. This destroyed the charger, the laptop and my USB with all of my work! Because of that I’ve been in college for the last couple of hours trying to meet my deadlines! I just have the worst luck ever.

Some of you might be wondering why I’m doing this kind of post right now. Well I got a couple of emails from you guys asking why I haven’t been posting and what’s going on with me lately, so I thought I would do this for you guys. Thanks for those emails by the way, they made my day :)

If you guys would like to get in contact with me just tweet me @Jayson__Knott (that’s a double underscore) 

P.S. never buy a charger from a dodgy website!

Taking Opportunities

Taking opportunities, what do I mean? Well you’re not stupid you know what I’m talking about. This is whenever you find something that is useful for you to do you do it and it can greatly benefit, but let’s be more specific. Almost all colleges have multiple opportunities for you to chase. They have their own programmes like at my college they have a student ambassador scheme where you apply for it and if you get it it’s almost like being a prefect but in college, you help with college events and you even help organize them. Keeping it brief it basically looks good for your UCAS application (so they say) and it helps you get somewhere with the experiences in the scheme. But that’s just one of many. They don’t just have their own schemes, they allow other organisations come in and talk about what they did, that’s how I found out about NCS and that was one of the best experiences in my life, but apart from it being an amazing experience it helped me gain skills that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

Getting to the point, you should at the very least consider these kind of opportunities because your college is there to help you get somewhere, so if they are opening doors for you, get your foot in that door. The harsh reality is that if you aren’t making enough noise nobody will notice you. If you are just another person trying their look on their application for whatever it is and they compare you to people who took every opportunity that had put in front of them, chances are they will choose that person. I used to be that person that either could never be bothered or I didn’t think it would benefit me but in reality I should have been bother and it did benefit me. Now I just take anything that is put in front of me.

So what was the best opportunity that you have had or missed? Leave a comment or tweet me @Jayson__Knott :)

Revision Problems?

The infamous monster we all know as revision. It takes up our free time, our life, makes us stressed and just generally makes most of not want to do that subject anymore. For me it’s maths revision. I do a GCSE resit in college and it is getting ever so closer to my exam and everyone is encouraging me to revise, I want to revise. But it never happens. Only recently I have actually bit the bullet and just revised. It took a lot of will power though because for some reason I’m not wired to revise.

So why am I talking about this? Well I want to get my three main triggers out there that stop me from revising just in case you have the same ones so that you can learn to avoid or overcome them because after all, revision is what’s going to get you the grade you deserve.

1)   Thinking of better and more entertaining ways to spend my time – this is the classic one. Every time that I say to myself “I better revise tonight” I think about the fact that I want to update my playlist on soundcloud or that I want to watch House of Cards on Netflix (great series by the way). So what I’ve started to do is get my parents to make me revise, and so far it’s working because they can stop me from doing these things because I used to not have enough self-restraint.

2)    Making pathetic excuses – Yet another classic. I always say to myself “I don’t have to revise this, it’s really easy and I’ll remember it anyway” wrong! Take trigonometry for example, I’ll listen and understand it one minute and the next I’ve forgotten how to label the triangle. To counter this I’ve started to think back to this and tell myself that I will forget it and its worth a little time to revise it so it sticks in my head.

3)    Becoming easily distracted – This one was a massive one for me, I could never stop looking at my phone to see what was going on or if there was another YouTube video up for me to watch. Although this was a big issue for me I found that the solution was simple. Turn your phone off.

Now I know what stops me from revising I’ve been revising almost every night now. Instead of going on my phone or Xbox to kill time I revise and I actually feel pretty good after it because I’ve done something productive instead of sitting around and doing meaningless things. My expected grade has gone back up and I’m rarely left confused on a topic in class now. Trust me when I say that this is worth it, nothing is more important to me now than revising.

I hope I haven’t left you guys thinking I’m a complete nerd but yeah that’s what revision is like for me and leave a comment of what your triggers are so others can learn from your mistakes also :)

Tweet me! @Jayson__Knott

Keeping Organized

Organisation, this is something that is considered more of chore than something that is quite useful. The little things like keeping specific pieces of coursework in organised folders. This is a topic that could become somewhat confusing so bear with me.

I’m going to go off of my own organisational skills so some of you might even be better organised than I am. To view the full sized screen shot click on the images that are all in order at the bottom. So what do I do? Personally most of my work in college is on computer so it’s pretty easy to keep organised and I've noticed that if I didn't stay organised I would have to search through hundreds of files to find the work I’m currently doing and I could see that getting pretty confusing. The first thing I do is create a folder with this structure in naming “Frederick Knott – Business Studies” this is what it looks like. I like to keep it in a first letter capital structure because of my slight OCD. After you go into this folder you’ll notice that I have a folder for each tutor that teach me different topics to others and the ones who teach the same topic get put into the same folder. Jumping into the folder with two tutors for example sake my law folder, I have the folder with Beth and then Jasmine, then I have the assignment sheets and assessment records on the outside, this is so I know exactly where they are and I can just go straight to them when I need to. Once you go into the folders you’ll be met with pass, merit and distinction folders, these are self-explanatory. Once you get into the pass folder I have yet more folders and most of you are probably thinking “another folder!” but this is because in these units there are a lot of passes that have to be done in comparison to merits and distinctions. I have them split into different categories like “Business Law – Leaflets” and “Business Law – Posters” this is to ensure that I don’t have to look around for what I need to get to. For the units that require that I have lots of different images I then separate them from the work itself so that I have something to back me up just in case I lose the work.

That’s pretty much it for my way of organising my work. I can’t help with organising paper based stuff because I don’t do that kind of thing, but if you guys have any suggestions just leave a comment on how you do it :) Also most of my organisation is OCD like and convenience so do what works for you and I wrote this because when I've managed to have this standard of organisation in my work I feel proud of it (weird I know) but I thought I'd share it with you guys :)

Tweet me! @Jayson__Knott

Getting Help When YOU Need It

We've all been there, that time where you feel like everything is getting on top of you and the stress becomes a little too much. Some people can cope others (like me) seem to just give up sometimes and it’s easy to forget that there are people that can help you in these situations. So here’s a little advice.

1)   Accepting that you need a little help – A lot of people never even acknowledge that they need some help with this, accepting that you do isn’t a weakness. If anything it’s a strength because it involves accepting that you can’t deal with everything that is going on whether that is to do with your work or personal life it’s good to get the practical things out of the way, especially coursework because you don’t want to the work to pile up in times of stress as it would just end up adding to your stress.

2)  Seeking Help – This is another thing that people struggle with, most feel embarrassed or as if they are being a pest. I can guarantee that you wouldn’t be the first student to struggle, you’re only human and your college or school will know this. There is most likely someone to help you in school or college to email people you think will know about said person, for example your tutor or head of year if you’re in school. Remember you can get help with the stress itself or with the things that are stressing you out like coursework of the whole subject, just going to a tutor and having them explain things to you does a world of good.

3)  Follow the advice! – This is the biggest of them all! A lot of people go to see someone about some help in a close minded attitude. So because of this the advice they give you could be the best advice ever but you won’t follow it because you either think you are above it or you just don’t want to. So ironically, my advice would be to follow their advice! You’ve gone for the help that you need so you do need to follow that advice no matter what!

4)    Find stress relievers – this is the final step which is the most useful one of all. Find things that calm you down, whether that is just taking an hour or so to watch something on the TV or listening to music just do it. You need a rest you can’t be expected to do everything at once all of the time, you’ll just become more frustrated and everything you’ve gone and done so far would have been a waste, just sit back and relax!

That’s what I think you should do based on my personal experience, you’re not the only that struggles every so often :)

If you’ve got any good tips for relieving some stress let me know by either leaving a comment or by tweeting me at @Jayson__Knott :)

Looking For The Right University

So many of us have probably been thinking about university and some of us are studying for a BTEC qualification like me. But when you look at university courses online most of us have noticed that more often than not you see that their requirements are usually A-Level or AS. So what does this mean for BTEC? I mean take what I study for example, I do Business Studies Level 3 Extended Diploma which is equivalent to 3 A-levels. But what does this mean?

I recently had a look at Manchester University for International Management with American Business Studies and when I had a look at the entry requirements at first I was a little confused because I study BTEC and I had to look for the alternative entry requirements but after I found the BTEC option it became clearer. After look around more at different universities I got gist for the entry requirements and what most business courses have to offer.

So how do you find a course that suits you? Well coming from me I don’t have an exact way of doing this, I’d recommend just research and even if you have your heart set on a specific course, keep looking because you could find a uni with better version of that course or you might even stumble across something that interests you more. I’ve recently been looking around at universities and because my main access to the internet is through my phone and the computers at college, I would do basic research on my phone, like looking local universities and then I’d email my college email the links. After this I would go into college and when I got some free time I made a little table with what uni it was, the course, brief description, location of the uni and then the link. Of course this is just a starting point for me, I have until next year to worry about this but it’s good to have a head start instead of worrying too much when it comes to it.

Got a better way to look for a good uni? 

Tweet me! – @Jayson__Knott

Leave a comment :) 

My NCS Experience

For those of you that don't know what NCS is, NCS is what I would consider volunteering but it doesn't feel like it. It’s more of a fun thing to do, almost like an adventure. I first learnt about NCS through a friend who had done it before me, but I didn't really pay much attention to it. After a couple months I had a PDP session at college which is essentially a little Assembly and NCS had a little presentation on there. They talked all about what happens, the experiences we would have if we signed up and also some statistics, stuff that most don't usually care about.

The two things that really stood out to me where it looks good on your CV and UCAS form and the big seller for me was the confidence boost. I'll admit, I was a little susceptible at first but I thought why not go for it and see what happens?

Meet three of our leaders!

Cutting a long story short I got an email telling me where and when I had to go for NCS. I went there with my friend Ieva and at first we assumed we'd be on the same team. When we got there we found out that Ieva had turn up to the wrong meet up. Turns out she was on another wave, we had a good laugh about it and I teased her about it until she was taken to her meet up. So after being separated from someone I was sort of planning on clinging to because of my shear lack of confidence around new people I just followed the people I was supposed to follow. I was given a team and told to follow one of the PM's (personal mentors) and off I went to my team. I was in the media team (team Edwards). Before long I was sat in this massive sports hall in a circle with my team. I was extremely nervous, I didn't speak and I didn't even laugh at things I found funny. Everyone talked among themselves for a while our PM started these little ice breaking activities, which still didn't work all too well for me, but it did break the ice a little. I ended up making one my team mates twerk so it was a success really. 

After all the activities it was time to get going up to somewhere County Durham and to this day I still don't know exactly where it was because (for me at least) it was that remote. On the journey up their I was sat next to one of my team mates Conrad and it took me a good couple hours to actually attempt conversation and even then I was sweating when I was trying to.

This all goes to show how little confidence I USED to have around people.

When we got to the place, we were shown our rooms, told all the rules, the boring less interesting stuff. We went and chose our beds, these were wooden bunk beds and if I'm to be entirely honest I wasn't looking forward to sleeping in them. In that room I met Saul, now this guy was hilarious, I can honestly say he reduced the tension in the air because he just got everyone laughing with jokes I can't really repeat on here ha ha. 

After loads of different team meetings I got pretty comfortable with my group and even with other people in the wave, the confidence was starting to build. I found myself speaking up which is something I never thought I was going to do. In a social situation I was already out of my comfort zone. So at this point the group was bonded pretty well and the activities we did seemed a little petty beforehand but it was fun when we got down to it. The first one we did was the high ropes, now this was one of my massive fears... Heights. So I climbed this log that got higher and higher as I went further along, this was a good 3 meters of the ground and I was even scared of that! The next one was the leap of faith. I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to do this one because this was REALLY high up. But it decided to go for it. I sprung up and climbed up there as fast as I could, got to the top and made the worst mistake. I looked down. The fear was immense. But I thought back to what I just did a couple minutes ago, I just went for it! So I jumped and punched that ball dangling a meter away from the platform. I was so relieved! My team was cheering, I knew that it was because it’s what you’re supposed to do but even so it was a pretty good feeling. 

After all the amazing experiences in County Durham it was time to head back and at this point our team had bonded REALLY well, I felt like I knew these people for years. On the way back I was sat next to Anna who was also in my team. This wasn't a repeat of the last journey, at this point I'd found my self-confidence so I was talking freely without worrying, not just with Anna but with everyone around me. I sort of became a little dominate which was a completely different ball game. I was telling everyone my stories with such enthusiasm, it was like I was a totally different person. 

After we got back we was told to come back to the meet up spot and we will start the next part of the challenge. At this stage we my team had to create a promotional video for a disability centre in Stockport called Primus. Here we met some phenomenal people, from the people with disabilities to the people who care and help look after them. When we got outside we thought it would be almost like a medical centre, however when we actually went inside it was a completely different case. It was a really homey place, everyone was just relaxing, talking, playing games or just on the internet and talking to people around them. The most challenging part was filming for the video because it was hard not to feel rude, because these people where just doing their own thing and to film them just seemed like an invasion of privacy. So we asked them if they wanted to be filmed and they were so pleasant. So we did our thing, we filmed and talked to most of them there. This was an eye opening experience, something I would do all over again.

So we headed back and the only thing we spoke about on the short coach journey was the little encounters and things that we saw there. We were buzzing. 

Filming 

Here was the real challenge though. When we got back we had all the footage we needed, it was a big pile of interviews and loads of different shots for transitions. Now we had to put them all together and create a high standard promotional video for Primus. So for a good couple hours we went over how we wanted to come across to the audience, happy or more of a serious maybe even heart breaking theme? Then we thought back to what our experience was with them, it was a very positive and uplifting experience. So I said "why not try to give our audience the same experience that we had... happy, I mean come on, do you really think that Primus would want a heart breaking PROMOTIONAL video?" So we went for it. But this was only just the beginning. We had to come up with story boards and leaders of two different teams. Because we had to create this video and also present it to the rest of the wave, we had to have two teams that would make the video and also put a presentation together. In the video team we had me, Sian, Conrad, Haidar and Nicole and in the other team we had Anna, Alina, Khushba and Etty. 

All hard work here...

The next task was to structure the video, so we had the idea of splitting our group into three parts. Two people would work on the first part of the video, another two on the middle and another two for the final section. I worked on the middle, but I was the director of the video team so I had to manage everyone's area. This meant that I had to edit my section with Etty who was also working with the presentation team and then help with the other two section. This became a little stressful but it meant that all three sections had the same design in terms of transitions and text. Cutting it short again we finished the video just in time and then we presented the video to our wave and it was pretty well received.

The final part of the challenge was next. We had to come up with a campaign that we would follow through and conduct in Piccadilly Gardens. 

So we went back up to our room and brainstormed our ideas and we even pitched some of our ideas to the group. We had so many ideas but the one we kept on coming back to was young stereo types. So once we came up with the idea we started to formulate it, we came up with a name logo and we came up with a little activity for people to do with us on campaign day. The name was TOTS and our activity was a matching game where we got facts about successful people of today which where all about their younger life.

Cutting the long thought process short, we had to pitch our campaign to dragons so that we could get the money we needed to get these campaigns going. So again we had to come up with another presentation with all the facts that they would need to invest in the campaign. In the script we had individual roles to play, mine was to tell the dragons about how much we needed for specific items and why. At the end we got the money we needed and went off to finalize our campaign.

Moving forward a week later, it was campaign day.

Campaign Day!

Campaign day was exciting for all of us but it was the last day we would all see each other, so the mood was a little low at first but we kept to it. At first it felt like it was dragging because not that many people took interest, but after a couple hours we had so many people around our stall we was finding it hard to cope. Then at the end of the day, the leaders gave speeches and we all had a laugh, but the highlight was when some of us did the Ghost chili pepper challenge. I was offered some but I was sane enough to refuse. 

I've made some amazing memories doing NCS, met some amazing people, and had amazing experiences and most of all it’s given me the confidence to go do whatever I even get tempted by. All of this just because I wanted something extra to put down on a CV or UCAS form!

It’s been the most worth wile experience of my life and I recommend this to anyone who has the opportunity to do this, you won't regret it. If I could I would do it all over again! 

It all starts at a yes!

Is It Worth Leaving It Last Minute?

The one thing I've noticed about college is that in those subjects where you have a lot of coursework its easy to let the work pile up. I'm guilty of this myself, there's always that one thing you want to first "oh I'll do it when I've watched this" or the classic "I'll do it tomorrow instead" and before you know it, your doing the work in a last minute panic barely scraping the deadline.

I don't know about you guys but personally I worry about the work more than I actually do the work itself!

I think it's time that we all stopped with the excuses and got the work done. I've recently stopped making those cliche excuses and just making a start as soon as I get the work. I can honestly say it feels WAY better. You are able to just relax after it knowing that now you can have those few hours of procrastinating doing whatever you want! 

My advice would be just simply get that work done as soon as you get it, mainly because now in BTEC there isn't the case where you can just hand the work in over and over again, get it back marked and then easily get the grade you want. Now you've only got one chance at a resub and that's it, if you fail, you just fail.

So is it worth it? 

I'll leave that to you.

What was your best excuse for not doing any coursework? Let me know in the comments :)

Let Me Introduce Myself!

Hi, my name is Jayson I'm currently studying BTEC Business Studies Level 3 Extended Diploma. My college is really good, they are quite helpful and since I came here I've felt like I'll actually be going somewhere. Speaking of which I originally went to a different college to the one I'm at now and I studied Level 2 Graphics Design, I spent little over a week and just hated being there as I had to travel a decent distance and also the people at the college just weren't my sort of crowed. 

Enough of my educational background, what about me personally? Well my full name is Frederick Jayson Knott, but I mainly go by Jayson as it just sticks with people more because Frederick is generally one of those names (for me personally) that just doesn't fit that well and despite the fact that my parents chose Frederick as my first name, they have always called me Jayson. Confusing I know. I have always had an act for talking too much, my friends and family have always found that sometimes they have to just smile and nod at me because I'm just bombarding them will random discussions and thoughts, so the fact that I love writing makes a lot of sense because I essentially write what I think. When I'm at home I kill time by either listening to Soundcloud or something on Spotify and playing on my Xbox from time to time, but I usually don't have the time because of college. Another thing I enjoy is college, yeah I'm a little bit of geek but I just love to be on my feet rather than sitting at home doing nothing. Although at times it is hard to keep up with deadlines I love it, because it means I'm having to work hard and be productive as for some unknown reason I hate not being productive, even in my spare time.